Alvin Curran is one of the most active and inventive avant-garde and electronic music composers of the current and past century. He was the co-founder of the radical music collective, Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV), and has taught at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica in Rome, as well as at Mills College, where he was a visiting Professor of Music from 1991 to 2006. He specializes in works for keyboard, percussion, winds, voices, and natural sounds, often performed at outdoor sites. In this program, recorded in March of 1991, Curran introduces a number of his works, including “Erat Verbum” and “Electric Rags II”. Curran’s pieces incorporate ambient and musical sounds in a startlingly complex and lyrical evocation of the human spirit. (from KPFA Folio)